Independent participatory media for Iran

Twelve Iranian political prisoners have heeded opposition pleas and ended their hunger strike at Evin Prison.

The Kaleme website reports that the prisoners, who had refused food since June 18 to protest the death of two other political prisoners, ended their strike on Sunday June 26.

Several senior political figures — including former president,Mohammad Khatami, senior clergy like Ayatollah Bayat Zanjani, and the children of opposition leaders MirHosein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, who are currently under house arrest — had issued messages urging the strikers to consider their health and begin eating again.

In a written announcement, the prisoners say they were severely shocked by the death of their fellow inmate Reza Hoda Saber, and a hunger strike was the least they could have done to express their grief and protest the incident.

They write: "Our hunger strike was on one hand a response to our conscience and moral responsibility to act as an inmate of Hoda Saber; and on the other hand it was a cry of anger and protest against the cruelty that Saber and Haleh Sahabi before him were subjected to.”

Hoda Saber had gone on a hunger strike to protest Haleh Sahabi’s death, which happened after security forces overran her father’s funeral. Hoda Saber died 10 days into his hunger strike, and his fellow inmates maintain he was badly beaten on the eighth day of his strike.

The prisoners stress that prison authorities were responsible for Hoda Saber’s death and must be held accountable for it.

They go on to thank the six prisoners in Rejaishahr Prison who lent their support by joining in the strike.

They finish by saying the end of their hunger strike by no means marks an end to their protests: “The protests of the Greens in Iran will continue until they have fully attained their individual and civil rights.”